Role Identity: The Nineteenth-century American Protestant Missionary In China

This paper is to discuss to what extent the concepts of "psychology identity" can be applied to the studies of women missionaries and their work in 19^th China. By the research on Lottie Moon who worked in Shandong province as a missionary, I want to analyze three kind of identities in different contexts. Firstly, the women thoughts in 19^th American society spurred the new women identity which impelled them went out of the "house gate" to play more important role in social affairs and in order to extend their work domain many of them eventually pursued their careers abroad. Secondly, woman missionaries inevitably conflicted to some degree with men missionaries in their works because of the fatherhood structure of the mission and how to play their roles determined their images in the mind of the domestic women and the religion field. And thirdly, their psychology identity was complex in the face of Chinese culture and Chinese women. They sympathized with Chinese women on one hand,but on the other hand they constructed an unequally women sphere between them for their inferiority complex in culture. Lottie Moon who had stayed in China for 39 years told us the special functions of "femininity" in mission work. Focusing on her thought, idea, struggle and behavior as a "woman" will help us understand the concept of "women missionary".